Hasta La Gadget!

This isn’t the first time that the French have gotten involved with shenanigans on Twitter, but today the French government has announced that they’re getting rid of the hashtag and replacing it with what they’re calling the “mot-dièse,” or “sharp-word.” However, citizens of France won’t be required to adopt the new style, but the government will be using it for now on in official documentation.

The decision was made by the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologisme, which seeks to get rid of common English terms in the French language by finding proper French alternatives. However, one possible issue with the new phrase is that “mot-dièse” denotes the sharp sign (♯), rather than the right-leaning number sign, or the hashtag symbol on Twitter (#).

It turns out that the rise of social media and various other technologies have resulted in the subsequent rise in the use of English slang words in foreign languages. A spokesman for the Office Québécois de la Langue Française said that “borrowing too many words from English opens the door to a mishmash of French and English.” This could possibly have an impact on French phonetics and grammar, and not just terminology.

Again, this isn’t the first time that the French have criticized Twitter’s features. Hashtags have been a problem for the French government in the past after racist hashtags, such as #UnBonJuif (“#AGoodJew”), raised a cause for concern in European country, and local courts have been in battle with Twitter to handle offensive content.

[via The Huffington Post]

French government replaces Twitter hashtag with “mot-dièse” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Twitter’s new Vine social video service, a “video Instagram” of sorts for sharing six second blasts of video content, has fallen afoul of Facebook, with users blocked from raiding their Facebook friends for new contacts. Vine, which launched as a free iOS app yesterday, attempts to kickstart the sharing process by pulling in other users from Twitter and Facebook accounts; however, shortly after the app went live, those trying to import contacts from Facebook were faced with a message that the functionality had been disabled.

According to the original pop-up, Twitter’s new app “is not authorized” to grab Facebook’s data, leaving users facing manual adding of their friends on the site. That warning has since been changed to a more generic “An error occurred” dialog; there are also reports that Vine users have been unable to share their videos to their Facebook timeline.

A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable that the social network had no comment beyond the vague text of the error message. However, it’s not the first time the company has yanked down the shutters to prevent rival social services from getting their teeth into Facebook data.

Back in August, microblogging platform Tumblr discovered its friend-finder functionality had been blocked by Facebook, for instance, while Android dropped native Facebook contacts sync in early 2011, after the social site refused to allow exports for backup purposes. Facebook isn’t the only company to wage war with data access, mind; only a month before the Tumblr block, Twitter had thrown up a similar block to Facebook-acquired Instagram.

What remains to be seen is whether Facebook has a Vine-style short video sharing feature of its own in the pipeline; the company has proved adept at mimicking rival apps with its own, home-grown versions, such as happened with Snapchat-esque Poke last month. Expanding Facebook Camera or Instagram with brief video support would hardly be difficult.

Facebook’s Vine Whine is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to Thursday evening everyone. Today we heard Samsung might sell as many as 10 million Galaxy S IV handsets after the device launches, which is supposedly happening later this year. We also heard J.J. Abrams might direct the next Star Wars movie, despite the fact that he said he wouldn’t in an interview last year. Microsoft delivered its financial report for Q2 2013 today, posting $6.38 billion in profit, while AT&T’s own reported showed a net loss of $3.9 billion. Samsung Display said today that it has produced 300 million OLED panels, and ABI Research is predicting that 145 million tablets will be shipped in 2013.

Western Digital‘s fiscal Q2 results show the company pulled in $3.8 billion in revenue during the quarter, and Belkin announced that it will buy up Cisco’s home networking business. The Huawei Ascend P2 was featured in a leaked press shot today, and Logitech made it clear that it isn’t leaving the PC gaming business. Namco Bandai explained the reason some pre-orders of the Ni No Kuni Wizard’s Edition are being canceled or delayed, while Deep Silver offered up nine minutes of gameplay footage from Dead Island: Riptide.

Acer has introduced the world to its new Liquid E1 Android smartphone, and Wolfram Alpha announced a number of new upgrades to its Facebook analytics tools. Vine arrived on Twitter today, bringing six-second videos to the masses, and Internet Explorer is targeting the children of the ’90s in a new ad. Apple held a town hall meeting with employees after its financial report yesterday, and AT&T announced the end to this week’s U-Verse issues. THQ president Jason Rubin revealed that the remaining THQ IP will be sold off in a separate process, while a French court has ordered Twitter to identify racist users.

We got our first look at JOBS today, with Temple Run 2 arriving on Android after a week of exclusivity on iOS. Lenovo might be looking to buy RIM in an effort to bolster its mobile offerings, and Sony has been fined for the PlayStation Network breach two years after the fact. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 showed up in the wild earlier today, and Intel announced plans to open up a $4 billion plant in Ireland. Nokia issued its Q4 2012 results today while revealing that Symbian is going the way of the dinosaurs in the same report. Finally tonight, we have a review of Vine for you to read through, and Chris Burns goes hands-on with GeForce Experience, unboxes the Samsung ATIV Odyssey, and tells us why Apple may shake things up in 2013. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: January 24, 2013 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Vine, Twitter’s new micro-video sharing… thing, is temporarily down, buckled beneath the weight of desk recordings. More »

Twitter has been criticized in the past for not being as vigilant as other social networks as far as removing offensive content, and it looks like a French court is taking matters into their own hands by ordering Twitter to hand over the usernames and information of users who post racist and offensive tweets.

The French court ruling follows a legal complaint from back in October by the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF), where they argued that a number of tweets were being ignored by authorities that had broken French law prohibiting racial hatred. The group has criticized Twitter in the past, and the social network eventually removed some of the tweets, but the UEJF is still taking legal action against Twitter.

The French court today said that Twitter must hand over the usernames of the offending tweeters “within the framework of its French site,” so the ruling doesn’t affect other countries. Twitter says that they do not monitor content, but they review reports that are sent in consisting of content that may be illegal or against its policies.

The court also ordered Twitter to set up an “easily accessible and visible” system that would allow users to alert the site of illegal content specifically for “crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred.” Back in October, Twitter removed a neo-Nazi group that would post racist tweets on the site, but only after German police stepped in.

French court orders Twitter to identify racist users is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.